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Authors: M. William Phelps

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BOOK: Never See Them Again
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CHAPTER 34
H
ARRIS HAD A
feeling the old guys were either looking to collect on the reward money, or maybe looking to pilfer some quick cash out of a grieving father. Whether one or the other, Harris didn't trust the old guys. But what the detective didn't want, beyond anything else, was to have two Thomas Magnum, P.I., wannabes, who had probably watched far too much crime television, wiggling their way into his case and muddying the waters. If they knew something substantial, they needed to cough it up.
The old guys had certainly known things that only a cop on the inside could have given to them. By talking to them over the course of a few weeks, Harris could tell that much. So the old guys had some good contacts within HPD. What PI didn't have a source inside the police?
In meeting with the old guys a few times after that night, George had come to realize that maybe they could help, but it was clear that they were also, at times, throwing mud against the wall, hoping some of it would stick.
“They were just rehashing stuff that HPD had scrubbed already,” George commented. “They were just trying to get a hundred-thousand-dollar reward! In my mind I was going to do what I could. And that was just one more avenue.”
Detective Harris had continually met with the old guys and, in George's words, “they just had some stupid stuff to say to him.”
At one time the old guys had even made George feel as though
he
was a suspect.
“Guys, I was somewhere else—everybody knows that. I have an alibi.”
In a nice way, George was trying to say,
Let it go. . . .
“In hindsight,” George said, “Brian Harris was right. They were a colossal waste of my time and money.”
George was a desperate father hoping to find his daughter's killers. Why wouldn't he jump at the chance to grab a rope that two private eyes were throwing him?
Brian Harris was finished with the old guys, however, and running out of patience. He had given the old guys the benefit of the doubt, hoping maybe they could dig something up. But their presence was becoming an irritation and hindrance more than anything else.
Harris had heard the old guys had gotten some information about a pistol—a weapon involved in the murders. He was curious, especially seeing that they hadn't shared the information with HPD. So Harris called one of the old guys.
The old guy was hesitant about giving Harris the info.
“Well,” Harris suggested, “let's meet up and talk then.”
The indication he left them with was that maybe they could help each other out.
“Yeah, okay,” the old guy said.
They met for breakfast.
Harris showed up with a subpoena for any information they had in relation to the Clear Lake murders. He threw it on the table.
One of the old guys placed his hand on Harris's chest. “Brian, hey, man, we don't have to turn
anything
over to you.”
Harris looked at his hand. “You have about one second to take your hand off my chest.”
They sat down.
A waitress came and Harris ordered coffee. “Listen,” he said, staring at the two of them, after she walked away, “you are
not
going to interfere with this investigation, you understand me? I want to see all your notes . . . anything you have!”
One old guy slid his notebook across the table. “Here.”
“You don't dictate how an investigation goes,” Harris warned. “You operate under the law.”
The old guys understood their role. Harris was clear. He would give them leads to follow up on—things he didn't have the manpower to get done himself. But they were not to hold anything back.
Breakfast was over.
CHAPTER 35
C
HRISTINE PAOLILLA AND
Justin Rott woke up one morning in March 2005 and decided, you know what, a big, traditional wedding, with ushers and bridesmaids, and long gowns and tuxedoes, and maybe those tiny hors d'oeuvres on silver serving platters, wasn't what they wanted. It just didn't seem to fit their character. Hundreds of guests and a big bill didn't sound all that enticing. The time it would take to schedule and send out invitations. Order food. Hire a band. Then sit and listen to people they didn't know clank forks against champagne glasses. Waiting and laying out a bunch of money for a huge celebration—for what?
Instead, they decided then and there, on that cold March morning, that a short shotgun ceremony would best reflect who they were as people and the love they had found in each other. A minister and a chapel, or perhaps a justice of the peace, would suffice.
Nothing more.
They chose March 22, 2005. Just like that, Justin and his girl woke up single and went to bed that same night a married couple. How easy it was to share a life, legally speaking, and turn over half of what you own to someone else.
Christine called Justin one day from the halfway house she was still living in: “Let's get out of here.”
“Okay,” he said.
And so that was it: they hopped in Christine's car and bid Kerrville, Texas,
adieu
.
The plan was to move to Friendswood and buy a condo. But for the time being, they stayed holed up in a motel, already spending Christine's cache of cash. The ATM became a daily stop for the both of them.
“No,” Justin said later when asked if they had started using drugs. “Not at this time. No.”
That was all about to change, however.
Very soon.
In a gigantic way.
 
 
HOMICIDE HAD BEEN
manning the phones ever since those billboards went up all over town. The Crime Stoppers tip line and George Koloroutis's website had been running on full speed. Now it was just after the two-year anniversary of the murders and HPD and the families launched another public cry for information. The anniversary was as good a time as any to continue to push the case. The past year had developed some leads, but nothing had ever come of them. With the announcement once more, the publication and the airing of the sketches again, came another round of new calls and leads to follow up on. Detective Brian Harris, who had been promoted to sergeant, supervising those men he had worked with (to the chagrin and resentment of some in the department), was working the case by himself by now. There was no team of investigators spending days looking at evidence, following up on calls, interviewing witnesses. Some cases get to a point where the thing that ultimately solves it is that notorious
break
.
That one lead: someone who perhaps courageously steps forward and decides to open up despite the consequences.
The flip side to this, however, is that there must be a system in place to get this lead into the right hands. Moreover, the lead itself might possibly have to mean something to the investigation in order to be useful. And with an investigation that had produced as many red herrings as this one, not to mention hundreds of “tips” and so-called witnesses, only a magician would have been able to pick out the best tip that the Homicide Unit had gotten up to this point as it came across Brian Harris's desk during the summer of 2005.
This crucial information—naming both killers—was called in on July 28 that year, exactly ten days and two years after the murders.
An anonymous caller phoned the department: “While Christopher Snider was drunk,” the female tipster told the tip line, “he told me that he and his girlfriend—her name is Christine, I do not know her last name—killed the four people in Clear Lake.”
And there it was: laid out on a silver platter, as if the keys to the case were plated in gold, and arrest warrants were there, filled out, signed by a judge, and ready to be served.
The tipster went on to say that Chris Snider, feeling a steady flow of booze wash over him on that day, wanting badly to get this demon monkey off his back, said, “Christine's best friend was raped by the two males that we killed! So Christine and I went to the location and I killed the two males, while Christine killed the two females. We wore bandanas over our faces.”
The details of this call fit a later description of Christine given by Chris Snider's sister, Brandee, to George Koloroutis, spelling out things clearly, and in doing so, seemed to make some sense out of the case and the motive behind such violent deaths. The female victims were Christine's friends, Chris's sister had said (a fact that the tipster had not verified).
“I just remember her (Christine Paolilla),” said Brandee, “as being intensely jealous, maniacal, malicious, and controlling. One thing I can say with certainty is my brother would have
never
touched a girl—much less done what was done, to
any
female. He was very protective of females. And the details of the case further showed me that there must have been some underlying jealousy between her (Christine) and [Rachael]. When I saw the photos of [Rachael], I knew instantly. [She] was very beautiful. . . .”
The speculation was that Rachael and Tiffany's beauty “ate Christine Paolilla alive.” She was crazy jealous of these girls—and with Rachael's head being beaten in with a pistol, it would certainly bode well for any argument of her killer snapping into an envious rage and taking that anger out on Rachael. Even more, both Rachael and Tiffany had been shot in or close to the vaginal area, another obvious “tell” pointing toward hatred and jealousy. Add to that the theory that Christine had told Chris that the two boys were rapists, and you have some serious theories of motive going on here. Whereas the investigators had believed all along that the killer (or killers) had gone to that house to murder D or Marcus, now it appeared that Christine had, in fact, initiated this crime to take out two of her friends, using a feigned rape accusation to get Chris Snider over there with her.
The informant nailed Christopher Snider's birth date (HPD checked it out) and last known address. She also stated Christine's father's name as “Dick Thomas.”
Close enough.
She gave Christine's phone number to HPD.
Again, this was spot-on (although HPD had no way of knowing this then).
There were two problems for Brian Harris as the lead crossed his desk. “The clue did not even come close to the motive we were working with, because it said he told the person (the tipster) that he killed the guys
because
they had raped [one of Christine's friends]. This was nowhere close to the backgrounds of the victims. I searched the reports and phone records for a ‘Snider'[after the tip came in] and did not make the connection. He was not listed in any local reports because the stuff he did with Christine was in the county. By then he had been shipped back to Kentucky.”
Then there was that phone record check that the Homicide Division had conducted on the girls' cell phones: that forty-eight-hour search backward. Again, if they would have gone back seventy-two hours, it would have all come together. Because Christine Paolilla's number was part of Rachael and Tiffany's records.
Then there was the photograph of Christine and Rachael. That seemingly naughty picture of Christine flossing her teeth with the strap of Rachael's panties had been mistakenly labeled by someone in the chain of command.
The wrong name was on the photograph.
Christine was not even listed among friends of the girls. So neither Christine nor Chris Snider were ever connected to Rachael or Tiffany. And thus, a tip that could have solved the case right then and there remained, for the time being, just another phone call to add to an enormous stack of calls already in the Clear Lake file.
In addition, there would soon be another major hurdle to contend with as August 2005 approached—this one brought on by Mother Nature.
CHAPTER 36
W
ITH SOME OF
that money she had received from her trust fund, Christine Paolilla and her new husband purchased a condo in Webster, Texas, a two-mile trip south of Clear Lake City, her old stomping grounds. Christine and Justin were now back in the neighborhood of the murders that she had helped commit. It was the end of April when the condo deal went through. They had been married for a few weeks then. Nestled comfortably inside their new home (the deed in both of their names), Christine watched television one day in July, right around the same time that latest call had come through the Crime Stoppers tip line. It was the two-year anniversary of the Clear Lake murders. Justin and Christine were upstairs. Christine was in the bedroom, and Justin was inside his studio, working on some drawings for tattoos. (“Justin was an incredible artist,” said one old friend.)
“Hey, babe, come in here,” Christine yelled from the other room.
Justin got up from where he sat with his sketchbook. He walked down the hall, then into the bedroom.
Christine was up off the bed, staring at the TV.
“What's up?” he asked.
“Look,” she said, pointing. She had one hand in her mouth, almost biting on the bottom of her palm. “Oh my . . . Oh my . . .”
On the television screen were photographs of Rachael, Tiffany, Marcus, and Adelbert. These were now familiar faces to area residents. The newscast was talking about the two-year anniversary and still no arrest.
At one point the sketches went up on the television screen.
Christine became “nervous, very worried” at that exact moment, Justin noticed. She paced, walking back and forth in front of the television.
Oh my! Oh my!
She stood in front of the TV as Justin sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what was going on with his wife.
“And she stood there,” Justin later said, “and she couldn't sit.”
Then the tears came. “Oh, my goodness,” Christine said as the sketches stayed up on the screen, “does that look like me? Does that
look
like me?”
She's involved,
Justin thought.
She's part of this.
It hit him all at once while watching her freak out at the sight of the photographs. Several comments she had made to him subtly over the past few weeks. That Christmas dinner. Her knowing the two girls. It was coming together for Justin as though he couldn't turn away.
“I couldn't deny it anymore,” he said later, talking about that moment as his wife sweated out the broadcast of the photographs. He realized, for the first time, that he had married a murderer. “There was something. . . . There was
truth
to something.”
BOOK: Never See Them Again
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